"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, January 02, 2012

Education and Ranking: More Lessons from South Carolina

Mike Klonsky tweeted (follow @mikeklonsky) the other day about a ranking of the worst schools in the U.S., noting that the list included many schools from South Carolina as well as quite a few charter schools.

First, this list of "worst" schools comes from a real estate site—which exposes one of the many problems with ranking anything in education: What credibility is there in a real estate site judging school quality?

What are the patterns here? The schools are burdened by enormous poverty; the schools tend to be middle and elementary schools (but the ninth grade campuses also appear—where students historically quit just before dropping out).

What does this careless ranking not explain? Let's consider some of the unspoken facts behind this ranking—things never mentioned by the corporate/"no excuses" reformers because that evidence contradicts their simplistic and misleading narratives:

• South Carolina has the ninth highest percent of people living below the poverty level (2008 U. S. Census data) in the U.S. These are rankings political and business leaders avoid—as SC has historically fallen in the bottom quartile of income, poverty, and equity throughout the history of the state, data that parallel the historical bashing of the state's schools as failing.

• South Carolina has a history of inequitable school funding, resulting in pockets of poverty (funded by a state minimum) and pockets of affluence (supplemented by local school districts). This inequity has been examined in Corridor of Shame, a documentary addressing a court case between the underfunded school districts in the state and the state itself.

• South Carolina is a primary target of libertarian/neo-con Republicans, often funded by out-of-state money and generally driven to dismantle public education through voucher and choice initiatives. Think-tanks, such as SCRG, also drive distorted and simplistic rankings as well as the South Carolina Policy Council issuing flawed "reports" that receive a free pass in the SC media.

• South Carolina is a right-to-work (non-union) state where teachers do not negotiate through a union tenure, pay scales, and academic freedom . In fact, during my 18 years as a public school teacher, I witnessed subtle and direct pressure put on any teachers who discussed or joined SCEA/NEA. There is a profound culture of silence in SC education that keeps teachers quiet and un-empowered.

Neighborhood Scout's ranking is inexcusable and misleading, but this list is simply one snapshot of a wider pattern of misinformation being driven by corporate/bureaucratic "no excuses" reformers who point their fingers at schools and teachers in order to keep the public's eyes away from the great social failure that is being perpetuated by corporate America through the merging of that corporate elite with our federal and state governments.

Are these schools slandered as the "worst" 100 schools in the U.S. actually the worst schools? No.

But they are disturbing evidence of the true failure in U.S. public education: Our schools are the most stark mirrors of our social inequity, an inequity of opportunity and income that is both tolerated and perpetuated by the exact leaders who have gained their privilege on the backs of those living and working in poverty all across the U.S. while their children attend neighborhood schools that are as burdened as the families by that poverty.

“One of the violences perpetuated by illiteracy is the suffocation of the consciousness and the expressiveness of men and women who are forbidden from reading and writing, thus limiting their capacity to write about their reading of the world so they can rethink about their original reading of it.” Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers